you covered the trial, wrote the story this morning. thank you for joining us. >> thanks for having me. coming up on c-span 3, the law school conference on the freedom of information act. first, susan long receives an award for her work in government openness. then the officials with the government services discuss the work with releasing government records. then a panel of attorneys release high-profile foia lawsu lawsuits. our system is undemocratic in a number of ways. one of the ways is closed primaries. in half of the states in the country, 40% of all the voters can't participate in the primaries. so, they have no say in who gets nominated. as a result, we get more and more extreme candidates on both ends of the spectrum.

>> saturday night on "afterwards" linda killian writes the book "the swing vote." also this weekend on book tv, saturday at 8:00, david brock on "the fox effect." then sunday night at 10:00, mark levin and his thoughts on the state of politics in "ameritopia." book tv every weekend on c-span 2. today, american university law school held a day-long event on the freedom of information act. they began by giving a reward to susan long. she is the director of the clearing house records division.

>> good morning. happy sunshine week to you all. we see the sun trying to poke out behind the clouds here at the washington college of law on the campus of american university. i'm dan metcalfe on the collaboration of government secrecy. we are pleased to welcome our auditorium audience and our viewers remotely both on the washington college of law webcast and, i understand, c-span will be broadcasting this as well. this is freedom of information day. and i on site and many folks know that

is the day that we celebrate openness in government, transparency, sunshine, call it what you will. that date is chosen and has been traditionally used because it's the birthday of james madison, who is regarded as the founding father of the freedom of information. this is the fifth freedom of information day program we have had here at the law school. and it is the 18th one that the collaboration of government secrecy has been able to hold in the last year and a half. i'm pleased to say -- pardon me, in the last four and a half years. i'm pleased to say we are continuing to hold these programs with great regularity. this is the 18th. for you more math mat cally inclined, we have now held 17 or exactly three per month, which is a record of which we're quite

proud. we also celebrate international right to know day in september. our audience here knows what freedom of information day is, but worldwide, the international to know day is on september 28th. we will have our sixth annual international right to know celebration this coming september 28th. so, that's something to look forward to. today, we continue our tradition here at the washington college of law of not only holding a day-long program and celebrating james madison's birthday and sunshine week in general, but we also have the tradition of presenting the robert vaughn foia legend award. this is the fifth time we presented this.

we are pleased we have an hon honoree who came in from out of town to receive the award. she is the first lady to receive the award of the four others who received it thus far in the last four years. we're very pleased, also, that we have last year's award recipient, alan morrison of gw law school, to make the presentation. we do things academy award style here. if you win best actor one year, you present best actress the next year. i'm pleased that professor morrison has agreed to continue that tradition. professor morrison, i'll introduce you first. everyone should know you are the founding director, together with ralph nader with the citizen group. that has been over the years and decades, the leading openness in

government litigation group in the land. then you retired in 2004 where you went to then teach at a number of law schools. stanford, nyu, harvard, georgetown, tulane, fudon university in china and even here at the washington college of law. professor morrison has argued 20 cases before the supreme court, including some particularly significant ones, and he was a well-deserved recipient of the award last year. i'm sorry that mr. vaughn is unable to be with us this morning. professor morrison will present to professor long. we have all professors here. it is a small community, is it not? then, professor long will be

giving you the benefit of her long, long years of wisdom in this area that's for sure. so, without anything further, we try to stick to tight time limits here as best we can. let me pass you over to professor alan morrison. >> thank you, dan. welcome. i did not teach at all those law schools in that short period of time since 2004. i'm fast, but not that fast. since we're celebrating foia day today, i made a resolution i filed one foia request today. i have a client who needs to sign some papers. it will be deemed to be filed today, although it actually won't be filed today. deemed. >> that is very lawyerly of you.

>> deemed is a meaning of let's pretend. when you see deemed in all of these opinions, you really know it is not true. they are pretending it is for other reasons. there is an old saying that i'm from the irs and i'm here to help you. well, today, we're turn that around a bit. the saying today is i'm sue long and i'm here to help the irs and the department of justice and the fbi and the dea and just about everybody else in the government. she's really here to help them. they haven't quite figured that out yet that she's really there to help them. we all know that she is. of course, she's really there to help the american people understand what their government is all about. which is, after all, the purpose of the foia or at least that is what everybody has always said it was.

when most people think of foia, they think of it in terms of exciting revelations. scandals and abuses, abu ghraib and fraud and waste and abuse. those are important because scandals and misuse of the government are always important to the american people. but they occupy a very small portion of what foia is all about and why we have open government. they don't focus on why ordinary citizens should be concerned about what the government is doing and not doing on a regular basis. that's where sue long and her late husband, phil, and her current side kick, who is unfortunately unable to be here today, david bernham. they truly appreciate data. small bits of important

information. they also realize this data is meaningless unless it can be accumulated and put together in some sensible fashion. and they understood far before me and almost everybody else how important the computer was going to be in figuring out what the government is doing and how important electronic records were in being able to take the information that was there and run it through a computer and come up with new ways of looking at information which nobody understood had any significance at all for the public before. so, they understood the importance of computers and electronic data and the importance of combining the two of them together and to produce information that was interesting and important because it told us things about our government we could never figure out in the absence of that kind of combination.

and, of course, it was available because those were not really secrets that were being hidden. there was just information that was in an inconvenient form and was usele lesless unless someboe sue long could do with her colleagues. but, of course, before the data collection, there were the manuals which she got out of the irs. these were really important because although they didn't have the word "law" written on them, they were all about the law and what the government thought the law was and what the government thought the law was not. there was every reason these should have been released because that's what we're supposed to know about our government. what the government thinks the law is. from was no basis to withhold them and she prevailed in getting the manuals released. the one thing you have to say

about irs manuals is they are really not very sexy. can you imagine being the public relations person who has to draft the press release? irs enforcement manual released today. coupled by yawns. those of us who know how important those manuals are recognize the great service that sue did not only with regard to the manuals that she got released, but the precedent she set and what it told everybody else about having to disclose what the government is really doing and thinking about the obligations under the law. there is one other point i want to make and that is, if you pardon the double entendre. that sue is really a long distance runner. you have to be willing to stay in the fight for a very long time. my calculation is it is almost 40 years you have been doing this. i know because that is how long i was doing it to at public

citiz citizen. there is no way that you can continue this kind of work unless you are prepared to look at it in the long run. it may not seem like it's 26 years in all these cases, but sometimes it feels as though it is running 26 years, if not 26 miles. surely, some of the lawyers in some of the cases with you, felt it was going on forever as we passed on to lawyer after lawyer to keep up the battle. if you weren't willing to go the long distance, you know the bureaucracy will wear you down and not get what you want. so sue long, better than anybody else, understands the importance of being a long-distance runner. for that reason and all of the other reasons that i have given and others have given, i am honored to present this award to you today, sue. congratulations.

it says in recognition of the remarkable career as a successful requester of government information and creator of litigation of four decades of the freedom of litigation act, foia award to susan b. long. [ applause ] >> tell me where i'm supposed to stand. >> folks, while these formal photographs are being taken, we have another very particular tradition here at the washington including of law. for our broadcast viewers, you may not realize there is a leading case going back to 1972 called vaughn v. rosen that established the legal mechanism

of which freedom of litigatiinf cases are litigated. agencies now file vaughn declarations as a means for foia cases. we have a vaughn declaration in the spirit to read with respect to professor long. whereas, susan long began working with the freedom of information act more than 40 years ago when she was one of the first persons to realize the potential for shedding light on federal government operations. whereas, together with her husband, phil long, she identified the agent of change at the internal revenue service. whereas, she is a successful foia litigant leading to the

precedence in which the government received only its second foia denial. after the vaughn v. rosen case. whereas, more than 20 years ago, she founded the transactional records clearing house with david bernham which has requests and litigation made available to the public detailed information on federal enforcement, staffing and spending. whereas, in so doing, she has uniquely influenced the development of the foia during its formative years and beyond. therefore, susan long is deserving of this recognition as recipient of the 2012 robert vaughn foia award. there is one more thing. as befits the type of legal document the government has to file in court in freedom of information act cases, the final

sentence. it is here by declared with 1746 that the foregoing is true and correct. i give you professor long. [ applause ] >> thank you, dan and thank you, alan, for all those kind words. you know, when dan called me to let me know that we were all going to award me this very significant honor and it had the word legend in it, i immediately thought, that means i'm really old to be a legend. at least i'm still a living legend and not a dead legend. sometimes if you live long enough, you, too, could become a legend. it started when i was a student

at the university of washington. i thought about, what should i say that might be interesting? i'm a statistician. i knew you did not want to hear about databases and statistics and all of the wonders of that although i get very excited about that. maybe i should think back about, you know, what was it like back in 1970 when first started the foia activity and think about what's changed. i really hadn't done that. you know, you don't really think back that long. you are too busy in the present. so i want to sort of contrast and tell you stories and contrast that and then hopefully close with my vision of the future. so, i need to paint this picture of 1970. i am a student at the university

of washington. my husband to be phil long is a small family business. and he gets audited by the internal revenue service. an ordinary event happens to many millions of people over the years. and, you know, he feels like and takes the law very seriously. he felt that he had paid his taxes and he was an honorable man. the irs wasn't really very nice to him. they did some unbelievable things. including threatening him with a jeopardy assessment. we didn't know what a jeopardy assessment was. at that point in time, i looked it up. i found it was a procedure, thankfully somewhat changed to have more due process.

anyone from the irs can come without saying you owe a dime and seize all of your assets forever and there was no court review. that is how things were set up. it was pretty astonishing and scary. as you can imagine, you suddenly had the thirst for knowledge. this is 1970. we really didn't know about the freedom of information act at that point in time. it was in the media a lot when it passed because the news media was a really big force then. we read some stuff and it kind of stuck in our brain and thank goodness for carnegie libraries and our traditional public libraries and librarians. we found a good librarian and we asked. we pulled out the freedom of information act and read it and wonderful. we wanted to know the

instructions to this were. we couldn't believe it. was this sort of normal or was this some rogue agent or something like that? and, you know, freedom of information act said all staff and it must be made public. period. simple. and i'm a statistician. i wanted to see information about how they were working. what happens if you went down path a and path b. to make a long story short, you know, we asked for this information originally because we thought it would help us. the pace of events moves slowly, although looking back, it was rapid in comparison to events today. but they didn't progress along. we didn't get the information in time to help us. we decided, you know, this is wrong and the law says this. you know, the government should

comply. and so we decided we would persist. you know, we went through the formal procedure of making requests and got turnedit was a. you know, the law said you are supposed to appeal it. we appealed it. we got turned down. another big surprise. so the law said that the remedy was you could take them to court. well, at that point in time, this is before the 1974 amendments. there is no award of attorney fees. there is no possibility of that. you know, us taking the irs to court is kind of a scary prospect, right? i'm really poor. my husband was even less conversant in how you approach that kind of thing. we talked. we didn't have any connections anywhere.

you know, if you are persistent and you knock on doors and call enough people and ask questions and the uniform response was from every single tax attorney and cpa is, no, you don't want to do this. this is totally stupid and foolish. first of all, you won't be successful. the big irs. secondly, you will make the irs mad. and let me tell you, they can be really nasty for the rest of your life and you don't want to do that. so, we thought about it and we said, it is just not right. so we went to washington. never having been to washington before, we just couldn't believe this could possibly be the way. congress or somebody. we went knocking on doors not knowing anybody. we are very persistent. that is one thing we are.

very persistent. through that, we got a referral to bernard finstewald who had been involved in the committee side staffer getting the freedom of information passed and was in private practice as an attorney. we called him up and made an appointment. we went to his office and laid it out. he said this is normal. what you have to do is call the government's bluff. the way you do this is you filed suit in court and then they know you are serious. and they will turnover the records to you. here's a copy of the complaint. you just have to change the words around a bit and file it and you are in business. and we decided, okay, we can do that. we filed first a suit against the internal revenue service manual, which we had nosed

around and found that was, according to the manual itself, the single official compilation of agency's policies and procedures all marked official use only. 32 feet of shelf space that irs contended they don't have instructions to staff that affected a member of the public. we went after some basic statistics because we found that, believe it or not at that point in time, it was classified information to know how many audits, high income versus low income, how many audits of big businesses versus little businesses, how many audits in washington state versus d.c. and kansas. you cannot have that road map. that cannot be released. we filed suit. guess what? the government didn't fold. suddenly we had a lawsuit on our

hands. it ended up that because in fact the irs wasn't cooperative after court orders, it ended with 12 lawsuits. along the way, the 1974 amendments came in to get attorneys fees. we got a very young fresh out of law school still going strong to take an appeal. we thought on one of them, the court will listen a bit more to somebody on appeal if it shows they are an attorney and got them to take it on for us pro bono. then they said, they didn't have a lot of work. it led to 12 lawsuits.

what was different about lawsuits back then? i thought about that. a couple of things occurred to me that are really, really striking that occur before and it's no longer true. number one was you got discovery in litigation in court. now, you may not appreciate what that means, but it's a world of difference because right now, government comes in and they sign some generalized statement nicely written by, i assume government attorneys to clinch the case. signed by somebody who usually doesn't have any personal knowledge of whether this is true or not and it is taken as gospel unless it was otherwise. that is hard to get across. back then, that wasn't the case.

and you got to see an actual judge. amazing. you had to argue it in front of a judge. here's me, you know? the thing we did is we asked for and we wanted to depose some people. we had a set of questions we wanted to give and have them answer. i remember judge beats. we got that judge. very good judge. i'm appearing, you know, pro se, who doesn't know what they are doing. the judge wasn't likely to allow me to, in fact, interrogate big government officials. waste of time and everything like that. he was turning me down. we didn't have an attorney. we talked to people and i remember the parting words from one very good attorney as i was headed out the door. he says, the worst thing happened to you, you get turned down. what you have to do is a say i

want to make an offer of proof. when i was turned down, i knew, okay, this is what i had to say. i want to make an offer of proof. not having the slightest idea what that actually meant and hoping it didn't mean i had to do it right then until i could find out what it meant. i remember the judge's head came up. he looked at me. i could see suddenly i was being taken more seriously. so, he said, okay. i immediately said and how long do i have to file that, your honor? he gave me some time. in the first case, he, in fact, did not allow us to undertake the discovery. you know what he did? he undertook the discovery and he interrogated the government. guess what? what they claimed